On an old desk in our living room, I keep a picture of my Mama from her 20’s. She was in a bathing suit (one piece) on a stage, competing in the Miss Warner Robins Air Force Base beauty contest. She won!

But she was always embarrassed by that picture. She never thought she was pretty enough.

When she was older, Mama often said she felt like she was in her 20s until she looked in the mirror. She would see her reflection, gasp a little, and say, “Who’s that old woman?”

I get it. I often look down at my hands, wrinkled with prominent veins, and remember being young, asking my Mama why her hands looked old.. I didn’t think of her as old. She was my Mama, and the human part of her, which was likely a little depressed at the thought of her child noticing her aging hands, didn’t exist in my mind. She said her hands were damaged by paint thinner. I didn’t know any different until I was well past 50 and had no idea she’d ever painted anything, much less used paint thinner. I think she didn’t want to admit she was, like all of us, aging.

Mine look just like hers did. I tell myself my veiny hands were the result of working out with weights. Not.

I notice recently that my forearms bruise more easily. A lot more easily. I can brush up against the trim around a doorframe, and my arms look like grape jelly is stuck all over them.

Mama had that too as she aged. And to add insult to injury, the official diagnosis is Senile Purpura. The unofficial name is ‘old lady bruises.’

Four years ago, I was getting married for the first (and last) time, so I was soooo careful not to bump into anything. My wedding dress was sleeveless with a long slit up one leg. That is a lot of skin to protect for a 60-year-old.

A couple of days before the wedding, as I was getting out of my car, my neighbor’s dog, Emma, whom I absolutely adored, slipped out of her yard and ran over to greet me. 

Emma was a jumper. She had lost a leg a few months earlier because of her amazing ability to escape and sail over any fence, which unfortunately led to her being hit by a car. After losing one of her front legs, she was depressed for about a week, but quickly resorted to climbing the chain-link fence with her remaining legs and flinging her body over the fence.

She was nothing if not resourceful.

Emma was also notorious for jumping onto people. When she came running (and hopping) toward me on her remaining three legs, my first impulse was to turn away, but seeing that huge grin on her sweet face, I decided that, whatever the outcome, she was getting her usual sugar and hugs from me.

After a good mauling and a few shouts of “Get back over here, Emma” from her owner, dark purple bruises were quickly forming down both arms and shins. Sigh. I looked like I had been hit by a car myself.

And I was getting married in a few days, seeing a lot of people I hadn’t seen in years. And having a photographer and videographer following me around all day. Lights. Camera. Action. Snap, snap, snap.

“Oooh, you are a lovely bride…for your AGE. But did you HURT your arm?  Uh, and LEG??”

Maybe, just maybe, I could find some heavy-duty cover-up makeup.

I remembered Mama had an ancient tube of some miracle makeup for her bruised arms and legs. Maybe that would hide most of it!

I also remembered later scrubbing that same leg makeup off the arms and lower half of Mama’s couch. Nope.

I imagined walking towards the altar to meet my soon-to-be husband with long brown stripes down the sides of my wedding dress. Uh, no.

The day of our wedding arrived, and my arms, and particularly the leg that stuck out from the slip in my dress, were covered in dark purple bruises.

I never noticed. Not for a second. And for anyone who asked, I told them the story about sweet, spastic Emma, whom I loved, and about my new husband, whom I also loved.

Nothing else mattered except love.

Many decades earlier, I sat in a church parking lot on Easter Sunday. I watched beautifully dressed couples holding hands and smiling, and little girls with big bows in their hair, wearing pastel, ruffly dresses, and dancing and running ahead of their parents as they all made their way inside.

I wore one of my work suits, dark navy with matching heels, nothing light-colored or feminine like the other ladies.

I had not gone to church since I was a little girl. I really wanted to go, but I didn’t know where I would sit. I didn’t know if anyone would talk to me. I couldn’t even remember what happened in a church service.

I watched as the last people went inside and the doors closed.

I cried for a few moments, turned on my car, and went home.

Back when I was a little girl, even though we were not regular churchgoers, we watched the Billy Graham Crusade program whenever it came on TV. A song was played during what I now know was the altar call. It was titled ‘Just as I Am’. The words are simple but powerful, written in the formal language of 1835, when the English poet Charlotte Elliott wrote them.

Most of her life, she was an invalid due to a chronic illness, and historians have said she suffered from depression and often felt useless to God.

In 1934, the future Reverend Graham accepted Christ as his savior. He heard the song ‘Just as I Am’ as he walked to the altar.

‘Just as I am – without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
-O Lamb of God, I come!’

Charlotte Elliott felt useless to God.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if we don’t feel good enough.

Maybe our job is simply to take one step forward, whether toward a waiting groom, a poem to write, or a Savior who died for us. Nothing else matters but love.

God will take you the rest of the way. And He uses every step.

And God IS love.

BTW, if you are in Macon, GA, and want a place to sit at church, I go to the 10:30 service at Northway on Zebulon. I sit four rows up, next to my tall, white-haired, extremely handsome husband. I’ll save a seat for you.

And please remember, God never forgot me…or you. Ever.